How to keep from blowing up and burning down your wood pelleting operation.

“You know you are making fuel, right?”
This is a question I often found myself asking as new wood pellet and biomass plants started
sprouting up all over the Midwest, Northeastern States, and Canada, but especially here in the Southeast United States. And I didn’t say this to be rude, but to point out potential combustible dust and ignition issues.

We have been making wood flour in North America for decades in the forest products, wood
products, secondary wood products, and especially in the MDF Medium Density Fiberboard and other related industries. Yet there seemed to be little technology transfer. Especially in fire and explosion prevention and protection.

Every engineering firm and large equipment manufacturer seemed to think they could build a wood
pellet plant better than the last. So, naturally many of the designs are different. Some are efficient, some not so much. Some are built with the proper engin…

Corn Silo Topping - Junkin Media
Dust Explosions – Sources of Dispersion and Ignition Not IndependentPublished on August 18, 2017Eur Ing Keith Plumb
Process and Equipment Consultant
In the November 2015 issue of the Chemical Engineer I wrote an article (https://www.integpharma.com/white-papers) about the fatal flaws associated Hazardous Area Classification.

In this article I wrote the following with respect to equipment selection.

“Also, the logic behind this selection is that the event that causes a dust cloud to form is independent of the event that leads to an ignition source becoming active. This is probably true for electrical
equipment, less so for non-electrical equipment and could be completely wrong for an electrostatic spark where the creation of the dust cloud could also create the spark.”

The video at the link below shows a corn silo at White Farms Inc in Indiana, USA,toppling over and rupturing. This causes a large dust cloud …

July 31, 2017 at approximately 1:00 pm. Switz City, Indiana. White Farms
Inc. Overhead tank collapsed full of corn. It hit a power line on the
way down and sparked the grain dust igniting the dust and causing the
flash. There were no injuries!

Behavior-based safety
has been practiced since the Ford Motor Company used it to increase
seat belt usage in 1970s. Controversy has dogged it ever since,
especially in the 1980s and 1990s when the BBS bandwagon attracted a
small army of consultants.

Organized labor and worker rights activists protested long and loud
that BBS was nothing more than a blame the worker tactic. Thousands of
businesses spent millions of dollars implementing BBS programs because
they believed it was a way to involve workers in their own safety and it
was “the next new thing” in safety.

On Wednesday, June 23, a plenary session at ASSE’s Safety 2017 drew
between 4,000 and 5,000 attendees to a spirited discussion on “BBS at
cross roads.” What puts BBS at a cross roads in 2017? It’s the rising
popularity of Human and Organizational Performance (HOP), called by some
the anti-BBS initiative. HOP holds that human error is inevitable and
should be expected. The organization of work and mana…

On Thursday, June 22, Dr. Tim Ludwig drew an audience of 500 attendees at ASSE’s
Safety 2017 to his presentation on stopping the ever-popular blame game
as a safety practice and instead striving for a better understanding of
human behavior.

According to Dr. Ludwig, a professor at Appalachian State University, Boone, NC, if you want to “turn the lights off on your safety culture”
go and blame the worker. By going on the offensive and pointing out
that injuries are their fault, a learning moment is lost, Dr. Ludwig
said. It’s better to use the incident to learn from behavioral science
how to find the true root cause of human behaviors, he said.

There is still much relevance and much to be gained from behavioral
science, said Dr. Ludwig, who also consults globally as the Safety-Doc.

Says Dr. Ludwig: “Our human tendencies result in interactions that
hurt the safety of our workers and the effectiveness of the systems we
put in place to protect them. One tendency i…

Tackle Combustible Dust Risks Right
Following a roadmap may help you assess your hazards and develop a mitigation strategy
By Karen Wear, Donaldson Company
Jun 13, 2017

Whether you’re a chemical engineer designing production equipment or one supervising operations and maintenance, you need to be aware of combustible dust risks. Increasing fines and incidents, such as the deadly 2013 explosion at the West Fertilizer Company site near Waco, Texas, are impacting the chemical industry.

This article provides a roadmap for evaluating your dust and process hazards, and suggests steps to plan a suitable mitigation strategy for your unique risk profile.

The Regulatory Landscape
Chemical processors must balance product output with the responsibility to address risks posed by dust-producing materials and processes. How you address such risks impacts production and how your plant fares during inspections from a growing host of regulators. Such “authorities having jurisdic…

Musk insists, however, that safety is the number one priority at Tesla. He claims that recent actions, like the company's hiring thousands of employees to create a third shift and reduce excess overtime, have made a major impact in lowering the injury rate.

A recent email Musk sent to employees indicates just how seriously he's taking the issue. Here's part of the email, as repo…